Manual:Professional Development:Effective Written Communication

Effective Written Communication
Now that we have explored both the types of written communication as well as the ideas common to all writ-ten communication we will now put them to use and learn how to write an effective letter and e-mail. By using the information in this section, you will improve your letters, in turn helping you build the image of a professional. 

Parts of a Letter
There are certain things that should always be included in your written correspondence, particularly when writing formal or business-related letters. These are:

Date:
Always date your correspondence, especially if it is time sensitive. Not only is it courteous, but it allows you to reference the document easier in the future. 

Return address:
If you use letterhead place your return address information, including a phone number, fax number and e-mail address (if any are available) below the date. If you have office hours or specific times when it is necessary to call you, put that information in the body of your letter, just before you close. 

Inside address:
The inside address is the block where you put information about the reader the letter is intended for. Many businesses open all mail that is received on a particular day, and just send what is inside to the recipient. Putting an inside address on the letter gives those individuals the information they need to route your correspondence to the proper person.

This is also useful if your intended recipient has a spouse or friend who picks up their mail. The Inside Address will be below the return address, unless letterhead is used. In that case, put the inside address under the date. 

Salutation and reference line:
Always use a salutation in any correspondence. It may be as simple as “Fred:” or, if speaking to an undeter-mined audience, “Dear Sir:” The salutation assists in setting the tone of the letter, so match it with what you intend to write in your letter body. If you are writing something formal, such as a request for promotion, use a formal greeting, such as “Commodore:” or “Dear Vice Admiral Lermontov:” If, on the other hand, this is just a friendly note, “Yo, Mike!” or “Dear Sally,” will do just fine. The salutation is placed below the inside address, unless you are using a Reference or Subject line, in which case it will go below that.

Also important is the subject/reference line. Although not often used in personal correspondence, both of these items are very important if you use written correspondence for business or even within STARFLEET.

A reference line is placed between the inside address and the salutation and begins with “Re:” which means “In Reference To. You use it if you are replying or writing about a specific piece of correspondence. A name or description of the correspondence or document is included after the reference symbol, e.g. Re:

Your Correspondence of June 7, 1996, or Re: The document “TRACOM and the 24th Century.” Normally, a copy of the referenced material is included with the correspondence.

If you are not referring to a specific piece of documentation, but your letter does concern only one general topic, a subject line is used instead of a reference line. This line begins with “Subject:” or “Subj.:” and is fol-lowed by the topic, e.g., “Subject: Marine Courses Available in the Professional Development Program” or “Subj.: The duties of TRACOM S-2.” 

The body:
Naturally, the body is the most important part of your letter. Before finishing the first paragraph, your reader should know what your letter is about. Use the rest of the letter to support the arguments or expand on the information given in that first paragraph. This is also where you put contact information that is not contained in your letterhead or return address, such as the best time to call you or an alternate phone/fax number or e-mail address. 

Signature blocks:
These are very important, as it lets the reader know who is sending them the letter. In fact, most people check the signature block first thing before they even start reading the letter. A good signature block should list your abbreviated rank (LTC for Lieutenant Colonel, for example), first and last name, and any modifiers like “Jr.”, “Sr.” or “III” (the third, etc.) on the first line. The next line should show your position or responsibility like “OIC, 12th Brigade” or “Commanding Officer, USS Arkham”. The last line should show your affiliation, like STAR-FLEET, SFMC, OR SFMC(R) for STARFLEET Marine Corps Reserves. If you have different areas of respon-sibility, particularly true of SFMC reservists, only list the most pertinent position relating to your letter. As an example, Vice Admiral Victor Lermontov is a SFMC Reservist. He is also the Commanding Officer of the USS High Frontier, a STARFLEET chapter.

If he writes a letter to the Chief of Operations, with a concern about his ship, he might use the following signature block:

VADM Victor Lermontov Commanding Officer, USS High Frontier STARFLEET

He could of course show SFMC(R) instead of STARFLEET, if he wanted to, but it would probably be more appropriate to show STARFLEET since his letter concerns mostly STARFLEET related information. If he writes to me concerning SFMC matters, however, he will sign as:

LGN Victor Lermontov OIC, 299th MSG SFMC(R)

It is also acceptable to place “STARFLEET,” “SFMC” or “SFMC(R)” immediately after your name, and leave off the third line entirely, like this:

LGN Victor Lermontov, SFMC OIC, 299th MSG

Use your best judgment and remember that the more unnecessary things you add to a signature block, the greater your chances of looking like an egomaniac or a “stuffed shirt”. Keep it simple, relevant, and straight-forward. 

Before You Send that Letter
Before you send that letter, you need to do several things and make sure that the letter is appropriate. Below are several things that you should do before you send the letter. 

Proofread your work:
It is very important to proofread your letter before sending it out, even in e-mail format. There really is no ex-cuse for not checking your work, except for laziness or carelessness. A carefully written proposal may go down in flames because you made the simple mistake of misspelling the name of the person you are writing to — repeatedly. Poorly written or spelled material makes a very poor impression on the reader. No one ex-pects perfection, especially in e-mail where lower standards of spelling and grammar are accepted. 

Check spelling:
Most, if not all, word processing programs have a spelling checker. Use it! If you are computer challenged, and are typing or writing your letter in the more traditional manner, at least take the time to check the spelling of names, places, and any word with “ie” or “ou” combinations in it. I know someone who spells “friend” as “freind” or “fiend” on a regular basis and has on more than one occasion rooted for the “Kansas City Chefs”. 

Check grammar and punctuation:
If you won’t check your spelling, or can’t spell worth a darn anyway, there isn’t anything I can do for you as far as grammar goes. Just go through and read your letter out loud to yourself. If you have to take a breath in the middle of a sentence, it needs a comma, or it needs to be chopped into a couple of shorter sentences. As a general rule of thumb, if you have a sentence with more than thirty-five words in it you’re either running for office or you’re running off at the mouth. In the days of the telegraph, it was an economic necessity to use as few words as possible to create a message, since you paid “per word” to send the telegram. It became the mark of educated and intelligent men to send great amounts of information in as few words as possible. My personal favorite (although probably not the best example of professionalism, I admit) was one sent to Lord Home, a British noble. It said “TO HELL WITH YOU. OFFENSIVE LETTER FOLLOWS.” Perhaps a better ex-ample would be the reply an American officer gave to a German delegation, which had come to request the American surrender at the Battle of the Bulge. After a lengthy, but polite explanation of the bad tactical situa-tion the American army was in, the Germans asked the American General to surrender. His reply was “Nuts to that!” The translator explained that it meant “No” to the puzzled Germans, and history was made. The point of these examples is to use as few words as possible when you are trying to get your message across.

There are a couple of common mistakes that people make concerning punctuation. Capitalize at the begin-ning of a sentence and use one space after periods, not two. Either indent the first line of paragraphs or leave a blank line between them, but not both. Examine the body of this and other SFMC materials to see an exam-ple of this. If your sentence has more than two commas, you probably ought to rewrite it or bread it up into two or more shorter sentences. 

Check Content:
Consider what you have written. Does it cover everything you intended it to? If you were following an outline or working from a list, did you cover every item? Does your letter follow a theme, or wander around and come back to the same topic a couple of times? Remember when you sat down and thought about what you were trying to achieve with your message? Did you achieve it? If not, scrap it and do it again. Almost everything needs to be rewritten at least once, this is especially true the longer the material is that you are writing. 

Check Tone:
Lastly, clear your mind and take a break from your writing. Go get a drink, fix a sandwich, or find something to do for a while. Then come back and pick up your letter and read it as if you were the recipient of the letter, not the author. You may be surprised to discover a tone to your letter that you didn’t intend to create, or you may suddenly realize that you emphasized some point too much or not enough. Fix it, and then mail it, knowing you did the best that you could do. 

Using E-mail as a Professional
E-mail is fast replacing traditional correspondence as the preferred medium of communication. As such you need to treat e-mail just like you would traditional correspondence, check your spelling, grammar, etc… but there are a few other items that you need to keep in mind. Those items are listed below. By using the information in this section, you will improve your e-mails, in turn helping you build the image of a professional. 

Acknowledge Your E-mails:
It is a good idea to acknowledge e-mail you receive, even if it doesn’t require a reply. This is courtesy, and it also lets the sender know that their message didn’t go whizzing off into the electronic ether someplace, in-stead of landing in your mailbox.

Quoting:
When quoting someone’s message, there are two things you should do. First, only quote the part of the mes-sage that is necessary to clarify you reply. Few things are more irritating than to see someone quote an entire three-page letter, and add the words “I agree” at the bottom. Of course, one thing that is more irritating than that is to see someone else do the same thing, including the “I agree”, and then add their own “Me too” at the bottom of that.

Second, indicate that you are quoting someone else’s text by either putting the quoted text in a separate col-or, or using one of the common Internet styles of quoting (either placing the quoted text in brackets, or prefac-ing each line with a “>” symbol). This separates your text from the original sender’s words. If you are writing a message that you expect others to quote heavily (i.e., you are making a list of items and want their feedback on each item) then separate major topics into distance paragraphs, so it is easier to quote them in reply. 

Netiquette:
Netiquette is a word that was coined to describe a set of common courtesies and conventions among users of the Internet and e-mail. If comes from the term “Etiquette”. Basically, it means acting politely and with com-mon courtesy to other on the net, as you would want to be treated. If this sounds a lot like the “Golden Rule”, you’re right. There are a few unique aspects to Netiquette, mostly because of the unique medium of electronic communication.

People who cannot communicate politely and with courtesy end up not communicating at all. Why waste time talking (or writing) to a person who is rude and insulting? Without a set of “guidelines” for behavior, anarchy and chaos eventually result, and the whole system breaks down. 

Flaming and Other E-mail Issues
E-mail is unique and so has a few other items of interest over that of traditional correspondence. Below are a few of these. 

“Flaming”:
This is the term for posting insulting, inflammatory, and generally rude messages to a person or group of persons.

The intention is, of course, to cause as much unhappiness as possible. This usually deteriorates into some-thing akin to “flaming e-mail volleyball” where a series of vicious and insulting messages are traded back and forth. This is childish and cowardly. In reality, few people would have the guts to say to your face the things they say in an e-mail message of this kind. Flaming serves no useful purpose, and instantly destroys any credibility you have as a professional. In two minutes, you can destroy a reputation you spend two years building. 

Criticism:
If you disagree with someone on something, then explain why you disagree, don’t make absolute or personal statements. Nothing will make you look more unprofessional than a personal attack on someone simply be-cause you disagree with them. 

Privacy:
While we are trying to raise the level of professionalism within our organization, there are still many people (inside or out) who simply do not measure up. These individuals believe that the privilege of privacy only ap-plies to themselves, not others. E-mail multiplies this attitude, because it is so easy to abuse the system. The best way to use e-mail is to assume that everything you send will be distributed to the general public. If you wouldn’t be comfortable standing on a chair in a church, saying out loud whatever you are writing, then don’t send it e-mail. The more controversial your message, the greater the odds are that it will be re-posted to a larger audience than you intended.

One of the recurring problems that occurs with e-mail, especially in STARFLEET, is the practice of posting someone’s private e-mail to you into a public forum, like a list server. If someone sends you public e-mail, you can answer it publicly or privately, as you desire. By posting to you publicly, the other person has waived their right to privacy concerning that posting. If, however, someone posts to you privately, you should answer him or her privately. By sending their mail to you privately, they are invoking their right to privacy. You should not violate their desire for privacy by posting their mail to a public forum. There are a few exceptions to every rule, of course. If the person sends you private e-mail that requires you to consult someone else for an answer, it may be appropriate to forward that e-mail onward. However, it is your responsibility to pass on the sender’s desire for privacy to the person you are forwarding to. This prevents the final recipient from accidentally violat-ing someone’s right to the final recipient from accidentally violating someone’s right to privacy. Threatening e-mail or e-mail that concerns illegal activity (that’s criminally illegal, not in violation of the bylaws of the Knights of Columbus, etc.) obviously isn’t entitled to privacy. Finally, if the person asks or implies that you distribute the message to a larger group (a letter of thanks, a request for help, etc.) then by all means, post it as necessary. 

List servers:
If you spend any time at all on-line, sending or receiving e-mail, you will encounter list servers. STARFLEET has an international list server, one or more Regional list servers per region, and several special interest ones. The STARFLEET Marines Corps has a list server, as well.

A list server (also called a listserve) is basically an automated bulletin board or public forum. You send a mes-sage to it, and it copies your message and then sends it to everyone who has subscribed to the list server, including yourself. If you read your MFM, there are instructions given on how to subscribe to the SFMC list server. List servers are an efficient way to get a lot of information out to a lot of people in a hurry, but they do have some disadvantages. First, if you don’t subscribe, you don’t get the messages from the listserve. Second, there may be several different topics being discussed at once, which can be confusing until you get the hang of it. Third, it is a public forum and it is usually automated, so there is no privacy and if someone wants to post messages not relative to the listserve’s purpose (chocolate recipes on the SFMC listserve, for exam-ple) you’ll have to wade through a bunch of garbage messages to find those important to you. 

A Word on Blogging, Chatting and IM
With these forms of communication special precautions should be taken and you should keep several things in mind. 

Blogging:
As mentioned previously, a blog is a public diary. Blogging is the act of using one to document your life, job, etc… For the most part spelling, grammar and other such things are not a concern for a blog. But what should be of the utmost concern is the information and details of your life that you post in your blog. While blogging appears to be anonymous there are ways to discover who owns a certain account, most of the time it can be deduced from the various postings and the details they contain. Blogs have ruined people’s careers, friend-ships, marriages, etc…

If you do blog or are considering it, be careful about what you post, above all use common sense. Don’t post any disparaging remarks or things that could potentially come back to haunt you. Remember a blog is public and anyone can see it. 

Chatting and IM:
Chatting and IM go hand-in-hand and are pretty much one in the same and for the most part is interchange-able. As with blogging spelling and grammar are not a concern but again what you say is. Unlike a phone call where there is no real record of what was said unless you record the conversation, which is illegal unless both parties consent to being recorded, there may be a record of what was typed in a chat/IM session. Most if not all chat/IM programs allow for copying the entire conversation to a text file for later use. The best thing to do is to assume that your conversation is being logged. The best thing to do is to treat chat/IM as though you were on the phone with someone or on a conference call.